our astonishment.
These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they had created,
but supposed them perfectly flat. Some thought the day could be
lengthened by stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns could throw
down the walls of a city, and all knew so little of the real nature of
the people they had created, that they commanded the people to love
them. Some were so ignorant as to suppose that man could believe just
as he might desire, or as might command, and to be governed by
observation, reason, and experience was a most foul and damning sin.
None of these gods could give a true account of the creation of this
little earth. All were woefully deficient in geology and astronomy. As
a rule, they were most miserable legislators, and as executives, they
were far inferior to the average of American presidents.
The deities have demanded the most abject and degrading obedience. In
order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of course,
they have always been partial to the people who created them, and they
have generally shown their partiality by assisting those people to rob
and destroy others, and to ravish their wives and daughters. Nothing is
so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so
enrages them, even now as to have some one deny their existence.
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so
easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god
market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
These gods not only attended to the skies, but were supposed to
interfere in all the affairs of men. They presided over everybody and
everything. They attended to every department. All was supposed to be
under their immediate control. Nothing was too small--nothing too
large; the falling of sparrows and the motions of planets were alike
attended to by these industrious and observing deities. From their
starry thrones they frequently came to the earth for the purpose of
imparting information to man. It is related of one that he came amid
thunderings and lightnings in order to tell the people they should not
cook a kid in its mother's milk. Some left their shining abode to tell
women that they should, or should not, have children, to inform a priest
how to cut and wear his apron, and to give directions as to the proper
manner for cleaning the intestines of a bird.
When the people failed to worship one of these gods, or failed to feed
and clothe his priests, (which was much the same thing,) he generally
visited them with pestilence and famine. Sometimes he allowed some
other nation to drag them into slavery--to sell their wives and
children; but generally he glutted his vengeance by murdering their
first born. The priests always did their whole duty, not only in
predicting these calamities, but in proving, when they did happen, that
they were brought upon the people because they had not given quite
enough to them.
These gods differed just as the nations differed; the greatest and most
powerful had the most powerful gods, while the weaker ones were obliged
to content themselves with the very off-scourings of the heavens. Each
of these gods promised happiness here and hereafter to all his slaves,
and threatened to eternally punish all who either disbelieved in his
existence or suspected that some other God might be his superior; but
to deny the existence of all gods was, and is, the crime of crimes.
Redden your hands with human blood; blast by slander the fair fame of
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